Tillie Olsen’s short story “I Stand Here Ironing” is a graphic portrayal of a mother’s painful reminiscence regarding things she regrets doing, or not doing, when raising her first daughter. Taking place during a time of war, she struggles first as a single mother to raise this child on her own and then remarries, only to find additional conflicts arise with the arrival of subsequent children. The reader feels the anguish that this young mother experiences as she is forced to support herself – first through work and then through remarriage – and the care of her daughter is given over to others throughout the years.
The conflicting emotions she faces continues throughout the girl’s life; the tie between mother and daughter irreparably harmed. The little girl who begins life as her mother’s beautiful miracle is thrust out into a world that cares little. Her mother feels powerless to stop the forces at work which wrest her child’s care from her control time after time. The mother’s first conflict arises in the day-to-day hardships of being a single mother with a daughter less than a year old to care for.
While looking for work she would “leave her daytimes with the woman downstairs to whom she was no miracle at all” (257). Emily was a beautiful child to her mother and even though she knew others would not see her this way the mother was forced by circumstance to give up her protection. Even working nights so she could spend time with her child during the day did not present a solution to this problem and the mother is forced to give over the child’s care to her absent husband’s family.
When she is finally able to pay Emily’s passage home, the mother is faced with yet another difficult time – putting her child into nursery school. The school is a violent and unpredictable place where again, the teachers do not treat Emily as the beautiful little miracle child she is. A second conflict arises as the mother begins having children with her new husband. As she is rushed to the hospital to give birth to her second daughter, Susan, the mother is unable to give Emily the attention she so desperately wants.
Emily goes into a tailspin of depression, experiencing nightmares and having little appetite. Emily eats so little she is sent to a convalescent home to regain her strength so the mother can focus on care for her newborn child. Even in an environment where she is supposed to be cared for and nursed back to health, Emily is not treated as her mother would wish. Communication between mother and daughter is shouted conversations from the balcony of the home with no physical interaction allowed.
Although mother and daughter stay in touch through letters, Emily is only allowed to be read the contents before the missive is destroyed. Emily shouts down to her mother from the balcony, “They don’t like you to love anybody here” (259). And the mother can see the painful truth of this. Once again, Emily is pushed aside so that life may go on for the rest of her family. This creates a conflict between Emily and her new sibling, and becomes more pronounced as she takes over some of the care for Susan and subsequent children since she is the oldest child.
The fact that Susan is blonde and chubby and cute while Emily is thin and dark and brooding does not help their relationship. As Emily grows older, she experiences difficulty in school. The mother’s conflict now centers around her desire to want her daughter to fit in with others her own age and the fact that she knows the girl must attend school no matter her dismay and anxiety at doing so. Surprisingly, Emily is quite resilient and finds her own way to deal with the stresses of school – by becoming “the class clown”.
Through humor, Emily has finally found a way to fit in and although her mother celebrates this fact, she finds herself unable to support Emily’s talent – “without money or knowing how, what does one do? We left it all to her” (262). This is just one more feeling of frustration and angst left in the mother as she struggles with the conflict of nurturing her first-born while caring for the rest of the family, who are more needful of her attention. Emily eventually goes on to attend college with a laissez-faire attitude borne of her comedic impulses and the despair she experienced throughout her life.
“In a couple of years we’ll all be atom-dead” (262) she pronounces, succinctly summing up her attitude about life. All of these conflicts and the resulting memories go through the mother’s mind as she stands ironing a dress and speaking with her daughter. She experiences regret interlaced with the justification that she did the best she could during difficult times, “all that is in her will not bloom…There is still enough left to live by” (262). Even as a young adult, Emily’s mother considers her to be the beautiful miracle child, despite her own apathy and loss of control.